Absolutely the best images of your artwork are taken outdoors on an overcast but bright day. You can get great results photographing small pieces by laying them flat on the ground, standing over them and shooting straight down. Larger works can be propped on a staircase to keep them upright. The camera should be centered in the middle of the picture and it should be perfectly perpendicular, or at right angles. The hue, contrast and saturation will be perfect if you shoot your artwork outdoors this way.

Note: Definitely don’t use your flash, and definitely do include a little background around each picture. You can trim it later.

If the edges come out slanted, do the following:

1. Open the image in Photoshop and choose Select/Select All.

2. Edit/Copy and Edit/Paste the image on top of itself.

Pull the handles to straighten the edges

3. Select Edit/Transform then choose Skew. Little handles will appear at each corner. Gently tug at the corners with your mouse until the slanted edges are straight. You might lose a little bit of the image, but for most purposes (like showing your work online), it will definitely be more than good enough.

Tip: If you can’t see to pull the handles, drag the window (bottom right corner) open wider before you Skew.

It’s always a good idea to apply Layer/Flatten layers before saving. This will make the file size smaller.